Don’t Ship Shit vs. Done is Better than Perfect

Print is great but embroidery is somehow more permanent than a tattoo.

Over the last 15 years I have worked at multiple companies. I have seen many ‘get-er-dun/rah-rah’ team slogans printed on a variety of paraphernalia. ‘Don’t Ship Shit’ and ‘Done is better than Perfect’ are among my favorites. These stand out given a) i tend to swear a lot and b) these are confusing when seen together.

If Paul Rand made a mobile application it would be perfect and you would have it on your phone.

Both are strong, yet conflicting messages. They seem at odds with one another. Each has its own merit, but both are subjective in nature. I believe that when they are used together each becomes stronger.

Huge shout out to this crew. Images found on….their Facebook page.

I attended an AIGA event (#recommend) a few years ago in Austin that featured guest speakers from Facebook’s Analog Print Laboratory. I learned that ‘Don’t Ship Shit’ comes straight from Mark Zuckerberg’s response to a question at a town hall meeting. Immediately afterward a designer from the lab ran and printed the quote on a batch of posters. After being posted up across campus they promptly disappeared. Employees took them back to their desks. A straight talk response became a popular slogan.

‘Perfect is the enemy of done’ doesn’t seem to have an origin story. Being neither modern nor historic broadens its application. A village elder anywhere on the planet could have passed this knowledge down to their next generation. I’m sure someone will program this into a voice prompt for a future generation Alexa/Siri/Google product.

When leveraged properly both maxims work better together.

The issue I have with both statements is that they lack objectivity. ‘Shit,’ unless you are talking about a type of diaper filler, tends to be elusive. What is ‘Shit’ to a designer might be acceptable to a developer or product manager and vice versa. But if all parties can agree on what is unacceptable, aka ‘Shit’ we have….an anti-north star of sorts. Something to navigate away from.

The same is true with ‘Perfect’ since perfection is rarely achieved. Yet it is a goal — something to strive for. In theory this is true. In practice everyone on a team needs to have a shared notion of perfection. If the people you work with can’t agree with what ‘Done’ is you may have larger problems than simple semantics.

I don’t believe in being overly dogmatic to begin with. I believe that either pithy slogan can’t be applied without thought BUT they are great rallying cries. Yet, if you can define and align people around what both ‘Shit’ and ‘Perfect’ mean you have the bookends of the spectrum.

Embrace defining failure as well as success.

In closing, in order to be successful working as a team you need to establish a common vernacular. Acknowledge the level of quality that is not acceptable. Launch something as close to ‘Perfect’ as you can every time, improving with each iteration.

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I did my own illustrations for this post based on a combination of google searches on a range of keywords, such as ‘giant pile of shit.’ Shout out to jeoff wilks for helping me edit the article, and to IBM Design’s Make Lab for reference images.

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